Mountain homes in Aspen have been pulling old ski equipment off the wall and turning it into furniture for decades. It isn’t a trend that arrived from a Pinterest board — it grew out of a place that has lived and breathed skiing since 1947 and has an abundance of old gear sitting in garages, back barns, and resale shops scattered all through the Roaring Fork Valley. If you’re furnishing a home or cabin in the Aspen area and want that ski-rooted aesthetic, there are real, practical ways to get there without going through a high-end design shop.
Chairlift chairs are the most iconic piece
Nothing signals Aspen mountain living quite like a retired chairlift chair sitting on a deck or tucked into a mudroom. These things are built to survive brutal winters — the steel frames are essentially indestructible, and with basic upkeep the seats hold up for a very long time.
Aspen Skiing Company operates four mountains: Aspen Mountain, Highlands, Buttermilk, and Snowmass. When those resorts upgrade lift infrastructure, the old chairs have to go somewhere. It is worth a direct call to the resort’s facilities or operations department to ask about surplus equipment. Not every retirement cycle results in chairs being made available to the public, but it happens, and being the person who asked is how you find out about it.
Outside of going directly to the resort, local Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist postings for the Aspen and Glenwood Springs area turn up chairlift chairs with some regularity. Private owners who bought them years ago and are moving on or clearing space are a consistent source, and the prices are usually reasonable compared to what specialty dealers charge.
Old skis have more uses than most people realize
The range of what you can do with a set of old skis is actually pretty remarkable. On the simple end, a few vintage powder skis hung on a wall are decor on their own and require nothing more than a couple of mounts. At the more involved end, old skis become the structure of benches, headboards, wine racks, coffee tables, and wall-mounted coat hook boards.
The skis worth hunting down are the older ones — anything from the 1960s through the mid-1980s. Those skis frequently have wooden tops or colorful vintage graphics that just look better than modern gear. They are also wider and structurally more useful for most furniture projects than the narrow carving skis that became common later.
Fall ski swap season in the Aspen area is the best time to load up on old equipment cheaply. Local shops and community organizations typically run consignment swaps in October and November. You can walk away with a stack of usable vintage skis for very little money, and the variety of what turns up can be genuinely surprising. Worth showing up early if you want the good stuff.
The Roaring Fork Valley has the craftspeople
Aspen gets most of the attention, but the valley running through Basalt and into Carbondale has a well-established artisan community — woodworkers, metalworkers, and furniture makers who specifically work in mountain and ski-inspired styles. Several of them take custom commissions and have built pieces for Aspen homes for years.
If you want something made to a specific dimension — a bench built to a particular length, a headboard designed around skis you already own, a coffee table with a glass top over vintage bindings and old race bibs — reaching out to craftspeople in the valley is the most direct path to getting exactly what you have in mind. A search for custom furniture makers in the Roaring Fork Valley will surface options, and a lot of them are genuinely interested in this kind of work.
Estate sales turn up things you won’t find anywhere else
Long-time Aspen residents who have been in the valley for thirty or forty years sometimes have ski artifacts that haven’t changed hands in decades — vintage chairlift seats, old racing gear, equipment from the mountain’s early years. When estates are dispersed, that material occasionally comes to market.
The Aspen Historical Society is a worthwhile contact for knowing what is coming up locally. General estate sale platforms like EstateSales.net let you search by zip code and browse preview photos before showing up in person. If you spot vintage ski equipment in the previews, plan to arrive early. There are buyers who specifically target this material, and the best pieces go fast.
Making your own pieces
For anyone comfortable with basic tools, ski furniture is not a complicated build. A ski bench requires a set of old skis, some lumber for the seat surface, and basic hardware. The construction is mostly assembly work rather than precision woodworking. YouTube has solid tutorials for this specific category of project, and the skills involved are accessible even for people who don’t spend much time in a shop.
The pole coat rack is the simplest starting point. A handful of vintage ski poles, a board to mount them on, and hooks or welded basket rests at the grips — it takes an afternoon, looks custom when it’s finished, and costs almost nothing if the poles came from a fall swap. It is an easy way to try the aesthetic in a real space before committing to anything larger.